Sri Trang Agro-Industry , Thailand’s largest publicly traded rubber maker is listed in Singapore and Bangkok.

Official says, Thai rubber exports in Y 2011 will double in value on rising World price

Thailand expected to earn twice as much from Rubber exports in Y 2011 from last year on soaring global price and rising demand from China and India, a Thai official said.

Thailand, the World’s largest rubber producer and exporter, could expect to earn US$14B from its exports of about 3M tons of Natural Rubber in Y 2011, Luckchai Kittipol, president of the private Thai Rubber Association, said in an interview.

This is compared to a revenue of US$7B from an amount of exports of 2.7M tons in Y 2010.

Despite the almost same amount of export tonnage, the revenue in USD terms is expected to double on the rising Global Rubber price.

Luckchai said rubber smoked sheet, a Key export item of Thai Rubber products, is likely to fetch a price of US$6,300 per ton this year, compared to US$3,650 per ton last year.

“Since last November, the price makes new record-high every day, ” said Luckchai, who is also chief executive officer of Thai Hua Rubber Public Company Limited, a major rubber producer and exporter listed in the Thai stock market.

“This year’s price will definitely be higher than last year,” he said. “And the trend is the price will remain at a high level,” he said.

He said demand of natural rubber turned upward again last year after the Global financial crisis in Y 2008, with rising production of automobile.

The automobile industry alone consumes roughly 70% of Global Natural Rubber, according to Luckchai.

He said last year’s drought in 1-H and then heavy rains in the last Q cut production of Natural Rubber, resulting in the rising price since November 2010.

Demand of Rubber rose in particular from its usage to produce auto tires in China, which consumes 27% of World’s production.

Luckchai, whose Thai Hua trades Rubber with China, said the Chinese consumption rose to 3M tons in Y 2010, the World’ s largest now, from about 1.1M tons in Y 2001.

Global demand of Natural Rubber in Y 2011 is estimated at 11M tons.

Luckchai said China superseded the United States as the World’s largest Rubber consumer in Y 2001, when its demand exceeded 1M tons while that of the US dropped below that mark.

“If Chinese demand continues to grow by leaps and bounds like this, the production will remain insufficient,” he said.

And the World’s production, 70% of which comes from the 3 big producers, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia, is under even higher pressure from the surging economy of India.

“If the Indian economy continues to grow like the Chinese, or just 50% of its pace, the production will become even more inadequate,” Luckchai said.

Rubber plantations, traditionally seen only in the South of Thailand, have in recent years sprung up in the Northeastern region of the country.

And Luckchai, whose Thai Xua started planting Rubber trees in the northeast in Y 1995, saw a high potential of this region, the driest and poorest of the country.

He said 41,600 sq kilometers of land in the Northeast could be used for planting Rubber trees, while currently only less than 11.5%, or 4,800 sq kilometers, are of Rubber plantations.

He believed that because of the attractive price, more farmers in the northeast would turn to plant Rubber trees.

“I’m confident that the northeast has a high potential,” the president of the Thai Rubber Association said. “Perhaps in the next 20-30 yrs, this region could become a bigger producer than the South.” —Paul A. Ebeling, Jnr. www.livetradingnews.com

Sri Trang Numbers

	Company	Industry	Sector	S&P 500
Sales (MRQ) vs Qtr. 1 Yr. Ago	88.75	2.48	0.98	10.05
Sales (TTM) vs TTM 1 Yr. Ago	89.89	1.49	3.66	13.90
Sales – 5 Yr. Growth Rate	10.67	7.67	9.55	7.42
EPS (MRQ) vs Qtr. 1 Yr. Ago	22.07	-0.69	108.23	65.37
EPS (TTM) vs TTM 1 Yr. Ago	673.93	–	–	–
EPS – 5 Yr. Growth Rate	18.55	1.56	3.23	4.95
Capital Spending – 5 Yr. Growth Rate	14.64	3.88	4.63	4.11

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Posted by Shayne Heffernan on Feb 25th, 2011and filed underAsia, Equities, Latest News, Markets, News & Events.You can follow any responses to this entry through theRSS 2.0You can leave a response by filling following comment form or trackback to this entry from your site